He said his name was Eduardo. I knew he was lying, of course. No one used their real name in that place.
It was a good name, though. It matched the light mahogany of his skin, with eyes so dark there was no boundary between pupil and iris. It matched the hand-rolled double maduro he used [...]

“It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America’s direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.

One morning last spring I came to work, settled down at my desk, and had just begun to check my email when I heard the crash of breaking glass outside. I stood up and craned my neck to look out the window and down to the sidewalk. Two figures were scuffling, rolling around together and [...]

The website Organic City Sounds is Evan Tenenbaum’s attempt to introduce the world to the city of Portland via their ears. The website includes audio clips in the categories of Portland Speaks and Organic Sounds, but it is perhaps the audio Portraits that are the most interesting and ambitious:
Every week I’ll bring

That’s what the brisket looked like after a week in the brine. I was careful to flip/move the pieces every couple of days.
Prepping the seasonings to rub on the corned brisket.
The seasoned corned brisket.
After smoking on the Traeger.
Hot off the grill.
The pastrami (yes, it’s pastrami now) had to sit in t

The Brisket
The Trimmed Brisket
The Pickling Spices
The Brining Mixture
The trimmed brisket is now submerged in a gallon of brine, absorbing all that salty-sweet-spicy goodness. In a couple of weeks, it’ll be time to take it out, rinse it off, apply a rub, and smoke it. The result will be homemade pastrami.
I̵

Dominic Holden of The Stranger has written his own little mini-manifesto on why he dislikes chuggers (charity muggers). He is far more restrained in his language than I would probably be.
Best of all he provided a link to these nifty cards (originating in Portland?) that you can print out yourself, stick in your pocket, and

“Heavy rains, deep snowfalls, monster floods and killing droughts are signs of a “new normal” of extreme U.S. weather events fueled by climate change, scientists and government planners said on Wednesday.”
Read the article at ScientificAmerican.com

If one believed in biorhythms, one would have to agree that all of mine are bottomed out right now.
All of my creative writing has been put on hold for the moment while I figure out if I want to keep pursuing it. Not to put to fine a point on it, but lately it’s been [...]

“If the espousal of birtherism truly becomes a necessity for winning the Republican presidential nomination, the right’s war on empiricism will have served not merely to build and mobilize a base, but also to isolate that base from the majority of Americans who still inhabit, at least most of the time, a reality-bas

If you’re like me, when you see a piece of glassware labeled PYREX®, you take for granted that it will be resistant to thermal shock. That’s been the hallmark of the borosilicate glass products sold under the trademark PYREX since, well, since forever. But not anymore.
Corning sold the PYREX brand to World Kitc

General Atomics has been busily building a railgun for the U.S. Navy. After firing a few solid slugs at hypersonic muzzle velocities, they decided to see what they could do with an aerodynamic projectile. Borrowing a tried and true technology already used for armor-piercing rounds, they put a finned projectile inside a disc

Shankhill Butchers was originally written by Colin Meloy of The Decemberists, and appeared on their album The Crane Wife.
But this cover by Sarah Jarosz is brilliant, and better than the original version. It goes beyond being merely spooky to truly ominous, while at the same time injecting a touch of sympathy for the little

One of the reasons posting here has been so light lately has been my desire to get serious about my creative writing. There have been some ups and downs, but I’ve finally got something fairly concrete to show for it.
I’ve basically finished the first installment of the collection of stories I’m writing. We

My last visit to the Original Pancake House on Barbur Boulevard, way back in 2007, ended up being the subject matter of a Portland Metblog post. I found their policy of not accepting credit or debit cards, a policy that required me to leave my children in the restaurant while I found an ATM, incredibly [...]

If you’ve read the horoscope in the newspaper, then you know they’re written so vaguely as to apply to everyone and anyone. And so they are completely useless.
Using my incredible astrological insights, I have prepared a horoscope that should actually prove useful to my readers. THIS is the kind of information t

I have become borderline obsessed with the UK band ‘Mumford & Sons’. I cannot explain why, except that I’ve always had a soft spot for tight vocal harmonies, folk music, and songs about love and loss. Mumford & Sons therefore occupies some sort of perfect intersection of the Venn Diagram that rep

I did not grow up eating Beanee Weenee. I’m sure that Van Camp’s classic canned baked-bean-and-frankfurter dish has it’s devotees, but I’m not one of them.
Nevertheless, for reasons I cannot fathom, I sometimes get a serious craving for baked beans and franks. Don’t ask me why, it’s not l

And a fairly blatant one at that.
Everyone I know has been swept away by the good-natured silliness of IFC’s Portlandia as it gently mocks some of the more beloved eccentricities of our Rose City.
But Concept Designer David Levy is working on a little project that reminds us that you can’t fix everything by just

I’ve always wanted one of those desktop zen fountains. You know, the ones that gurgle melodiously as water trickles down stacks of smoothly polished rocks.
The problem is, all the ones you can find commercially are either ugly as sin, or painfully expensive. Or, to be fair, both.
I have long thought that it would be c

And my, how things have changed lately. Or at least, a great many things have changed lately.
Our new refrigerator was delivered yesterday. This is noteworthy because our previous refrigerator was purchased when the Wife and I first rented a place in Eugene before we got married. That was nearly 20 years ago, and it was [..

How would you like a gasoline engine that provides the torque of a diesel, the top speed of a conventional gas engine, and the fuel efficiency of a hybrid? Check this out:
“Traditional four-cycle engines have four piston strokes: a down-stroke that pulls air into the cylinder, a compression up-stroke that compresses a

Although I have not been as active as I perhaps should have been here at PAgent’s Progress, I can tell you that I have been semi-seriously cultivating my newfound enthusiasm for creative writing. Frankly, I think that’s a fair trade, although y’all are more than welcome to disagree.
I reached a point where

Here’s a hat tip to the University of Cambridge in general, and to Cambridge Professor of Computer Security Ross Anderson in particular for his response to a demand from the UK (Bank) Cards Association that a Master’s Thesis by one of his students “be removed from public access immediately.”
Quoth Pr

In 1998 Andrew Wakefield published an article in the medical journal Lancet that purported to show a link between behavioral problems (i.e. autism) in children with their exposure to the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine.
This article kicked off a storm of public reaction. Terrified parents stopped getting their children

It is with sadness that I note the passing of actor Pete Postlethwaite on January 2, 2011, after a long battle with cancer.
You may not remember the name, but I can guarantee you remember his performances. Every character he played was inhabited with such life and sincerity that he became real. Although often tapped to [...